[Population history, medical and health history: fifty years of shared experiences]

The history of epidemics and health has been completely revised in France as a result of studies done by the Annales School and on the basis of the results of historical demographic research of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. The discovery of peaks in mortality in long-term death rates and the construction of a model for the mortality crisis of the Ancien regime have led to the study of past epidemics and their relation with malnutrition. Effects related with the development of historical anthropology and the publications of Michel Foucault have also had an influence. This article notes the important place of the history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in efforts to understand the marked decrease in mortality in developed countries, the disappearance of large epidemics, and the increase in endemics. Methods developed by population historians have made it possible to refine the analyses of this decrease despite variations in nosology. In addition, this article suggests especially promising avenues for future research.